For the last several years, we have been successfully using the IonCube PHP encoder. It works well, providing us with as secure a solution as we could wish for, for our code. [...] Due to the amount of head pounding involved in finding this issue [where IonCube was removing a valid logic branch], I started to consider using Zend Guard instead, figuring that Zend has far more resources and more experience in this arena, we might see less issues.

He details their upgrade process including comments on the included GUI and how it "just works" (once it's set up)

Kore Nordmann has made a post on his blog with more details on the Image_3D package and some of the rendering times he noticed (and the improvements) with the Zend Guard product.

The ZendGuard offers optimization and encoding for your PHP code. I visited a friend who ownes a license of ZendGuard so that we had the idea to test it with something CPU intesinve like Image_3D. The results were quiet surprising.

According to his results, the Zend Guard optimizer actually dropped the effectiveness and speed of rendering an image with his package - up to a 30% drop!